In 1972, Mick Farren published his first book, a comic-book style polemic that traces the development of the youth subculture from the 1950's; the subtitle on the back cover is "How Elvis gave birth to the Angry Brigade". The co-writer with him is Edward Barker, a cartoonist who designed the covers on the second and third albums by the Pink Fairies. The title is Watch Out Kids and is probably adapted from the lyric "Look out kids" in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan.
The online review of the book in funtopia.com – a website devoted to the work of Mick Farren – states: "Farren argues how the establishment soon co-opts any youth phenomenon that is remotely threatening and repackages this rebellion into something more wholesome and saleable to the masses. Therefore, ‘the man’ would always attempt to find a way of sanitising a movement and taking its threat away (still true of today). In a wider political context an ever increasing theme throughout the book is that the system oppresses us by means of exploitation at work, censorship, and indoctrination by the dominant establishment media, to name a few."
